Binaural hearing improves performance in most listening tasks. Two-channel stereophonic became the standard consumer medium in the late 1950's, and is still the most commonly used playback system even after 84 years of its introduction. Marching from mono to stereo to multichannel, consumers are continuously pursuing a more immersive listening experience. Previous and current efforts on creating immersive sound have primarily focused on using multiple speakers or Head-Related Transfer Functions (HRTF) related approaches to simulate virtual speakers only.
Although a lot of efforts have been carried out in the field of immersive sound in last decades, there are still various limitations with existing systems. For instance, it is difficult to create a true 360° sound effect with simulated virtual speakers and the listener has to stay at a fixed point to have the desired outcome. This is typically done by applying a set of directional transfer function, for example, Head-Related Transfer Functions or Binaural Room Impulse Response, to the sound sources. Another conventional solution is to incorporate more and more loudspeakers, e.g., 22 channels plus 2 subwoofer channels, into the sound system. This approach might be impractical in many cases because of the high costs and large space required for implementation.